Feeding the lions cold turkey

"Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings."-1Peter 5:8-9

Right here is good, not to far away, no people....good. I got some time to kill, hope God speaks to me fast here. These thoughts were swirling in my head as i looked for some place to read my Bible were I wouldn't be subject to all those stares. The collegiat crowd is fairly hostile towards anything that prevents their insatiable desires to "live it up." Thus, naturally they normaly choose to resist scriptures, usually justifying their decisions by listing off all the hypocracies committed by the "white-washed tombs" that inhabit the church....I don't blame them one bit either.
I sat down outside the Business building and busted out the Bible. There was only one guy out there and he didn't seem to notice much of anything.
After about five minutes the dude put out his cigarette and looked at me. "Good book you got there," he said. "Yep" I replied thinking, "would you shut it, I only have like 20 minutes to finish this chapter"(yeah I know). "You know I gotta read it like atleast thirty minutes a day or else I am totally derailed," he said. "Well it's good....international bestseller," I shot back hoping that he'd laugh and we'd return to our stranger status.
"you see I'm a recovering addict," he said.
I closed the book and looked at him, slightly taken aback at his vulnerablility...we hadn't even shaken hands.
Conviction- the act of convicting (thank you Webster) I then looked up
Convicted- the state of being convinced, syn. certainty
I'm convicted about a lot of things. I'm convicted that Captain Crunch is my favorite ceral, green is my favorite color, and the George Harrison solo in "Let it Be" is the best in Rock history. This dude was convicted that there was something better than intoxication and being doped. He told me that he "had to read that stuff" or else his day was sentenced to overwhelming temptation.
Here's the Kingdom, sharing each others convictions...because we know that we must "resist" the forces that threaten them for the sake of the "brotherhood." We resist these lion-like forces that are bound to break the beauty we are all entitled to right now.
What are your convictions?

When You Look Into Their Eyes, You'll See It

The t-shirts came in today. Humorously, a few members of the community where giving me a mock question and answer session when they saw me "sporting" the shirt that proclaims in big black block letters "The Kingdom of Heaven is Here." I can't wait to recieve all the glimpses, confused wonderers, and questioners as a result of this 99% cotton 1% polyester shirt. (weird right! I am used to the 90% 10%, 10%...not talking about tithes)
I saw the Kingdom again today, it is sprouting up all around in our community. Scott told a story in his sermon this morning about the best coffee house in town. And, although the story was a dead on picture of how the Kingdom of Heaven can make people react, I reacted with a mere "mmm."
It was during communion that I was broken(in the good sense) completely on the inside. It's not like this was the first time for me to cry in church, which is the beauty of it...each cry is unique, as unique as God's hand made flesh bursting into this shattered mosiac of a world.
As I was in line to recieve the body and blood(which has this awesome grape flavor) my eyes fell upon a woman and her child kneeling near the lip of the stage. I saw the Mother gently and quitely turn to ask her daughter something. My imagination tells me that she was asking something along the lines of "what do you want to pray about?" The holy spirit has this way of charging into me like a rhino(a group of rhinos is called a "crash," look it up). All I was doing was singing this song waiting for my "turn," and he revived the vitality of this can-become bland ritual. I saw a woman in a sense, empowering her kid by gently asking her to pray. The "two" of them were "coming together in his name(Mat. 18:20)," as I was about to come together with God in communion. In that moment I wept....really(I don't even know if anybody else took notice of the event on the lip of the stage).
In that moment I understood the way God relates to us, his word says "for [I] was pleased to call you mine(1Samuel 12)." I wonder if right there on the lip of the stage if that mother was thinking about her beautiful blonde-haired kid, "I am pleased to call you my own."